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Kaftancıoğlu: Erdoğan's accusations are lies

2018-01-18

Canan Kaftancıoğlu, the head of the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP)’s Istanbul Branch, has hit back after harsh criticism from President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan over tweets allegedly sent from her account, opposition newspaper Cumhuriyet reports.

A “terrorist propaganda” investigation was launched on Kaftancıoğlu on Jan. 14, the day she was elected as the Istanbul provincial head, based on her alleged social media posts supporting the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the radical Marxist-Leninist Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party, both designated terrorist organisations in Turkey.

Two days later, President Erdoğan launched a scathing attack on Kaftancıoğlu for her Twitter posts, displaying a number of them on a projector at a party meeting of the ruling Justice and Development Party.

Kaftancıoğlu apologised for one of the posts, which showed a picture of her posing near graffiti insulting Erdoğan’s mother during the 2013 Gezi Park protests.

However, the posts related to terrorist organisations have proven controversial, with at least one exposed as a fake. A Tweet supporting the PKK attributed to Kaftancıoğlu’s account from 2014 contained 168 characters, despite the limit of 140 characters on the social media site at that time.

Kaftancıoğlu said she did not find the lies told about her amusing, but thanked Erdoğan for bringing her “many new followers” on Twitter.

She went on to call into question the Erdoğan’s trustiworthiness, referring to misinformation spread by the Turkish president during the Gezi Park protests about protesters entering a mosque in Istanbul to drink alcohol.